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by NimDamy



Series: Keithtober2020 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, No beta we die like Adam, Pidge is a good bro, Pining, Post-Canon, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26824210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NimDamy/pseuds/NimDamy
Summary: Pidge found him.It was a habit by now.Whenever the world would shift from right underneath his feet, he’d take it in stride, brush it off then later on he’d run and hide.For some reason, it was always Pidge who found him.
Relationships: Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt
Series: Keithtober2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956574
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> #keithtober2020 prompt 1. home  
> (expanded list of tags in end notes)

Pidge found him.

It was a habit by now.

Whenever the world would shift from right underneath his feet, he’d take it in stride, brush it off then later on he’d run and hide.

For some reason, it was always Pidge who found him.

He is sitting on the edge of a cliff overlooking the desert. It was almost unbelievable that since the last time he’d been in that precise spot, nearly half a decade had passed.

His fellow former paladin sits down next to him, uncharacteristically quiet.

This too, strangely, was a habit by now.

Keith takes a deep breath.

There’s nothing in the air but desert dust and the quickly-fading scent of hoverbike exhaust fumes.

Pidge’s legs are dangling over the edge of the cliff, shoes having already gained a reddish hue from the dust. Coleen is, most likely, going to skin the both of them alive if even a single grain of red dirt will find its way into the Holt’s living room. Knowing the two of them, that is definitely going to happen.

“Shiro asked you, didn’t he?” she asks, stretching her arms above her head for a few seconds before laying down on the ground and folding them under her head.

Keith is silent for a long time.

He’d been expecting the question. Hell, he knows Shiro well enough that he could pinpoint the exact moment he’d be approached with the question only by the determination into Shiro’s walk. 

He’d said yes, of course. As if there was anything Shiro could ask him for that Keith would refuse. 

There had been congratulations, hugs, and a questionably high amount of alcohol available to celebrate afterwards. And Keith had just grinned and gone through the whole thing without a single crack in his perfectly crafted mask. 

“For all that your brain is always running circles around the rest of us, and for all that you’re always working on at least two projects simultaneously, you are far more observant than you’re given credit for,” he eventually says, as he mirrors her position.

She huffs a laugh.

“You wanna talk about it?”

This… this is not habit. This is new. Usually, she’s not this blunt. More often than not, she’d just start rambling about her most recent project, or Matt’s latest prank, or Hunk’s latest recipe. Eventually, he’d start making comments and they’d end up actually talking about what was really going on.

If this had been any other time, with any other person, Keith would have huffed and just left. But this was Pidge. And, for once, Keith was too tired, rubbed too raw to just deflect.

“I… no, not really. But… I knew it was coming. I was waiting for it to happen. Fuck, I’m glad he’s found his way back up again. After Adam… I didn’t know, I just waited, just hoped that he’d find his way again. That he’ll find a way to move on. I just…” he trails off, even now the thought feeling too crass, too selfish for him to say it out loud.

But Pidge is a genius. She knows things and, maybe more important than that, she knows Keith.

So she finishes his sentence for him.

“You hoped he’d find that his way leads him to you. Not to Curtis.”

There’s a sort of inescapable finality in her words, yet Keith feels as though a huge weight has been lifted off his shoulders. 

“And now you’re going to be Shiro’s best man…” she whispers next, soft enough that even with his enhanced hearing he can barely make out the words.

He doesn’t have the strength to argue his position.

“I’m leaving after the wedding. Mom called to tell me I'm needed on Daibazaal. I’m staying for the ceremony, but I’ll grab the first available teludav slot afterwards,” he tells her instead, and she just hums in agreement.

Once again, silence sets over them.

Keith sits up, eyes scanning the horizon, the sheer amount of desert spreading out in front of them.

Before the invasion, the cliffs and the mountains had looked differently. He suspected the remodeling was more for the sake of weapons calibration rather than an actual strategic move. Not that the Fires of Purification much cared for collateral damage anyway.

“Why are you doing this, Pidge?”

“Hmm?” 

“Why do you come looking?”

“Why are we here, Keith?” she shoots instead of answering. “Why this particular corner of the desert?”

He knows she knows the reason why.

He also knows that she’s expecting his answer, trading for hers. 

“I… this is where I grew up.” She keeps silent and he gently pokes her side before he continues. “That cabin I used while monitoring the Voltron radio chatter? My dad owned it. It was unlisted, one of his old army buddies helped him set it up. It used to be right over there,” he says, pointing to a slightly darker patch of red dirt. “Now it looks like the handiwork of a basic cruiser, most likely calibrating the aiming system. After my dad passed… that cabin was the closest I ever came to having a home again. The last thing I had tying me to him…”

It was, also, the only connection he’d had to his mother for most of his life. The luxite blade had been locked in a safe in his dad’s old bedroom, together with a letter written in an unfamiliar script and a copy of his dad’s will.

Some days, Keith still wondered if his dad had really expected he’d die as young as he did. If, maybe, he’d known that that was going to be his last day, his last call…

Some days, Keith resented him for it.

“I come looking because you came looking first.” Pidge’s words cut short his train of thought.

Keith turns to face her then, one eyebrow raised in silent questioning.

“The night after they announced dad and Matt and Shiro as presumed dead? It was the first time I snuck into the Garrison without Matt by my side or, at the very least, waiting to meet me halfway.”

Keith remembers the day she’s talking about in vivid details. How he’d ran out of the auditorium after the announcement was made, fast enough that none of the other cadets would see the tears. How the only thing he’d been aware of was Adam’s pale, grief-stricken face, and how he’d made no move to stop Keith even as he bolted through the door right next to him.

“I… I went straight for Matt’s room, well, Matt and Shiro’s room, I suppose, since they’d moved in together after Shiro and Adam broke up. I expected it to be empty,” she continues, “but it wasn’t. And let me tell you, in all the years before, I have never found that room reeking of alcohol as bad as it was that night…”

From the actual night Pidge is talking about, Keith doesn’t really remember that much. He’d broken into Shiro and Matt’s secret stash and downed about half a bottle of some fancy Japanese drink with an unpronounceable name that he was pretty sure had been supposed to be an engagement gift from Shiro’s parents. The rest of the night is less memories and more like a sea of blurry colors.

“I bumped into Matt’s cadet pal there,” she keeps on talking, “not that he figured out who I was. It was the first time I’d pulled my hair in a high ponytail, wearing Matt’s glasses and I’m pretty sure the hoodie I had on, while coming straight from Matt’s closet, was, in fact, one of Shiro’s”

All his hazy brain can come up with is a flash of orange-brown hair and oversized clothing.

“When I figured out what was going on, I ran. Found my way to the roof. I… I have no idea how much time I spent there alone. I hadn’t let myself cry at home, but there, under the stars? I think I cried for hours. Eventually, Matt’s buddy found me… he was, of course, drunk enough that he just called me Matt…”

And then, then Keith remembers.

The open doorway, the ghost-like apparition of Matt...who, as it turns out, was not Matt at all…

Then the roof, the small figure curled in on themself, shoulders shaking with silent sobs…

“I..” he tries to say something, but he forgets what it was the moment he opens his mouth.

“You mistook me for my brother’s ghost and proceeded to tell me how it couldn’t be true, how it had to be some big cover-up because there was no way Shiro, the Takashi Shirogane, the best pilot of the century, would commit pilot error. How this was unfair and how you only needed one shot and how you’d give everything for just one chance to talk to him, one chance to tell him everything, to come clean about how you felt…”

From the corner of his eye, Keith can see her wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, but just ending up with a streak of red dust on her cheek. 

“And then… then you told me that i had to stick around because  _ Matt, you don’t understand, your sister needs to see you! Oh, she’ll be so happy to see you, you have to stick around! _ and maybe it was stupid, a silly drunken ramble, but you’d just poured out all of your deepest feelings moments before that and yet your next thought went to the little girl Matt had left behind…” Once again, she takes a break, giving herself time for her breathing to return to normal.

“Pidge, I..”

“No, Keith, that’s the thing. My world had just shifted on its axis. I had lost half of my family, home… home was gone. But when i was lost and ran and hid? You came looking. You cared. You had no reason to even remember me, I don't think we’ve exchanged more than a total of five words before that. But you remembered me. I found my home again, that night on the Garrison rooftop. So I’ll come looking. As long as we’re both alive? I’ll come looking.”

Keith is silent for a long time after Pidge stops talking.

“I… I thought you were Matt…” he manages eventually, and even to his own ears it sounds stupid.

“Figured that much,” Pidge replies, bursting into laughter, and he soon joins her. “Actually,” she adds, mirth subsiding, “you gave me the idea for Pidge Gunderson. If you could so easily confuse me for my brother, well, with the right add-ons, so would the rest of the Garrison,” she explains. The look on his face has to be a sight, because it only takes one look for her to once again burst into laughter.

Underneath the amusement, though… what she says… it’s true. It’s one of those things that ended up becoming one of the fundamental truths of Keith’s life. She always came looking. After finding the Blue Lion, after getting to the Castle, it had become a habit. And she always found him.

Silence stretches between them, soft and comfortable, as they sit side by side and watch the sun set over the desert. 

The moment is broken, though, by the shrill tone of Pidge’s phone. She takes one look at the screen and huffs, equal parts amused and annoyed. But then there’s something else, a softer kind of gleam in her eyes, as she jumps to her feet and uselessly tries to wipe her dusty hands on her equally dusty shorts, before holding out one hand to him.

“Mom said to make sure I return you to the land of the living. She said that you promised you’d join us for dinner.” She grins at him and suddenly they’re back to simpler times, on an alien ship, soaring through the infinite expanse of space, where there were no invitations printed on embossed paper to watch him mockingly from his desk and no looming speeches to be made as the love of his life was vowing love and loyalty to someone else…

No they’re back on the Castle Ship, middle of the night, sneaking to the kitchen to raid Hunk’s supply of chocolate and, for the first time ever, Keith realizes that whoever said that it’s not the house that makes the home, but the people, well, they might have actually been onto something.

He shoots one last look to the darker-colored patch of dirt, shadows slowly covering it as the sun sinks lower, before reaching out and taking her outstretched hand, feeling the corner of his mouth twist upwards into a small smile.

“Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> extra tags: post s08, pining Keith, one-sided Sheith, background Shiro/Curtis
> 
> a big big shout out to the [Voltron Discord](https://discord.gg/JnC529h) server for the support and overall awesomeness and shout out to [Enchanted_Shadows](/users/Enchanted_Shadows%5D) for test-reading this and approving the amount of feels.  
> find me on [tumblr](https://nimdamy.tumblr.com)   
> and take all your reactions to the little buttons labeled "kudos" and "comment" below!  
> thank you for reading!


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